Sergey Karakayev, the commander of the Strategic Rocket Forces, told the press that his service is planning to conduct eleven missile launches in 2012. According to Karakayev, four launches will be used to extend service life of existing missiles and seven will be part of various missile development programs.

The 2011 missile launch program was also fairly ambitious - the Rocket Forces were planning to carry out ten launches. But in reality there were only three - a Dnepr/R-36MUTTH space launch in August, a launch of Topol missile with a new warhead in September, and a life-extension launch of Topol in November. (In his report Karakayev also included the December 2010 launch of Topol from Kapustin Yar in the number of launches conducted in the "2011 academic year", which allowed him to say that there were four launches in 2011 so far.) One more missile launch will take place before the end of the year, bringing the total number of 2011 launches to four. There was, of course, one failed "new development" launch in September 2011, so we could probably say that there were five launches in 2011 (six in Karakayev's count).

We will have to wait to see if the 2012 launch plan will be more successful than that of 2011. Right now, the Rocket Forces are planning to carry out four Dnepr/R-36MUTTH launches - KOMPSat-5 in January-February 2012, multiple-satellite launch on 28 September 2012 (DubaiSat-2 and others), PAZ in October, and Asnaro-2 in December 2012. Some of these dates may change, of course, but it appears that these launches should be counted in the totals. However, these are hardly life-extension or development launches - by launching Dnepr Russia is eliminating its old R-36MUTTH missiles, which have been withdrawn from service already.

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